Author: K McAlpine

TCS Talk | Michal Schwarz | 1st December 2017

Location: Meadows Lecture Theatre, Old Medical School, Teviot Place, Edinburgh.
Date: Fri 01/12/2017
Time:    17:45 – 19:00

Speaker: Michal Schwarz (Masaryk University, Czech Republic)

The Moon in Selected East Asian Folk Tales.  Cosmologies and deities of the moon in selected East Asian languages, traditions and folk tales

Michal’s lecture will focus on examples of folk tales from less known variants of East Asian traditions: for example, a cosmogonic local tale from the Korean Jeju island, and then ethnic Vietnamese and Mường folk tales about deities of the moon. Beside the cosmological complexity of topics in these relatively brief folk tales, the lecture will deal with the historical development of the respective religious traditions through selected theonyms and their use. Finally, Michal will compare Vietnamese syncretic motifs with their counterparts in Indian and Chinese source-traditions.

Michal_Schwarz_poster_draft_small

Forthcoming lecture

Please note that the date has changed for the lecture by Jelka Vince

Jelka Vince, Ivo Pilar Institute. Czech Republic 
The Proto-Slavic Pre-Christian Ritual Scenario of a Međimurje  Wedding as an Imitation of the Divine Wedding

Tuesday 5th December.
Room G.02, 19 George Sq
17.45-19.00
Jelka_Vince_draft_poster_small

 

Fruitfulness and fertility are widely represented symbolically in wedding traditions. The objective of this paper is to examine a wedding comedy from the Međimurje folklore titled “Baba Went Mushroom Picking” from a angle, which is to say as a document of a nonliterate culture, a source and path to the fragmentary reconstruction of former religious systems. Specifically, the paper hopes to reconstruct the vestiges of a Proto-Slavic ritual scenario, on the basis of which the Međimurje wedding could be connected with divine weddings as paradigmatic models for all weddings. The paper also raises the crucial question of whether this performative form also provides insight into pre-Christian wedding traditions, and into the ritual wedding scenario as a repetition of the sacred divine wedding.